Behind the scenes with the men who deploy airstrikes

The enemy fighters have them surrounded. It's the worst possible time for Staff Sergeant Kevin Rosner's radio to stop working.

It's 26 March in the Chowkay valley in Afghanistan's mountainous Kunar province, along the Pakistani border. Able Company, from the US Army's 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, has darted into the remote farming valley for a brief meeting with village elders.

The Chowkay is a hub for illegal activity in the province. Lumber smuggling and, especially, poppy farming draw in a rogue's gallery of bad guys: common criminals, Taliban fighters, armed isolationists. The Army wants to uproot the worst characters, but that means drying up the outflow of semi-processed poppy paste. Convincing the Chowkay's farmers to switch to other crops was going to take a lot of talking.

Today's mission is meant to start the conversation. But to facilitate a meeting between a team of Army agricultural experts and the Chowkay elders, the company has had to run a gauntlet of armed groups entrenched in the valley. "There's a high chance of going kinetic," Rosner says, using the military's synonym for "combat."

More than for most troops, "going kinetic" is Rosner's job. The baby-faced, 20-something sergeant with the tired-seeming eyes has at his fingertips more concentrated firepower than the rest of the battalion combined -- in a military culture where killing prowess means status, Rosner occupies one of the loftiest posts.

In his gray camouflaged uniform, body armor and helmet, Rosner looks a lot like the soldiers all around him. But he's not a soldier; he's an airman in the US Air Force, a so-called Joint Terminal Air Controller or "JTAC". It's his responsibility to coordinate air strikes, usually as a last resort when NATO troops are outnumbered and cornered. "If I'm doing my job, it means the shit has hit the fan," Rosner says.

Reluctant WarriorThe March mission takes a turn for the worse when the soldiers spot three teams of enemy fighters scaling the mountaintops surrounding the patrol's position. Occupying the high ground on three sides, the enemy fighters will have the terrain advantage. Shit, meet fan. Rosner opens up a channel on his radio to ask his headquarters for a flight of F-15E Strike Eagle bombers.

He does so reluctantly. More than most troops, Rosner and his fellow JTACs understand the potential consequences of an air strike. According to NATO statistics, 72 Afghan civilians have died due to NATO action in just the first three months of 2010, compared to 29 in the same period last year, In all, NATO accidentally killed 596 Afghan civilians last year, most of them in air strikes. If the three-month trend continues, this year's civilian death toll could exceed 1,000. On his way into the Chowkay, Rosner saw innocent farmers working their fields along the valley floor; he doesn't want to add them to the rolls of the dead.

NATO troops are also at risk whenever a mission goes kinetic and jets swoop in. During one recent mission in Afghanistan's arid south, a pair of US Air Force A-10 attack jets mistakenly strafed a NATO patrol with their powerful 30-millimeter, tank-killing cannons. This despite there being a JTAC with the patrol, trying to direct the aircraft towards their intended target -- a group of Taliban fighters. Luckily, no NATO troops were hurt.

"We feel a big responsibility for the guys here," says Tech Sergeant Phoebus Lazaridis, Rosner's boss. "Five-hundred pound bombs, 200-pound bombs ... imagine the effect that can have on them and the people in this country."

Last year, NATO's American commander, General Stanley McChrystal, tightened up the procedures for approving air strikes. Civilian deaths from errant bombs were undermining public support for the international coalition, McChrystal explained. "Air power contains the seeds of our own destruction if we do not use it responsibly."

McChrystal's new rules meant that JTACs would have to be doubly sure of the identities of anyone targeted in an air strike. In Afghanistan's rugged valleys, with Taliban fighters who blend in with civilians, positive identification can be tricky. For men like Rosner, it's better not to have to attack anyone at all. Rosner trained more than three years to become a JTAC, but says he would be content being idle. "I love doing my job," he says, "but it's nice to not have to do it."

Today in the Chowkay, circumstances underscore that dilemma when Rosner discovers his radio isn't working. Electronic interference from systems installed on the patrol's vehicles has jammed the JTAC's special radio. Rosner's job, already one of the hardest in the US military, has just become a lot harder. Not for the first time, he's been stymied by what Air Force experts have described as the "electronic soup" that results from too many radios, data-links and jammers all operating in the same area.

Reluctant and hobbled by the jamming, the airman scrambles to find a way to talk to the F-15s. He might have just minutes, even seconds, before the Taliban open fire.

Battle ManagerRosner is what the military calls a "battle manager." He and around 500 other NATO JTACS from the UK, US, Canada, Australia and other countries serve as liaisons and interpreters between ground troops and pilots. NATO is working hard to approximately double the number of JTACs available.

"Air power is one of those asymmetric advantages we have in Afghanistan," says Lieutenant Colonel Brad Lyons, commander of the US Air Force's 34th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, flying F-16 fighters from Bagram Air Field, outside Kabul. The squadron's primary mission is Close Air Support, or "CAS" -- that is, working in concert with ground troops.

"People think about CAS being a simple employment of ordnance from the air," Lyons says. "But CAS is all about coordination -- about rapidly sharing information so everyone understands the same problem."

Air Force pilots speak in Air Force terminology, use unique types of radios, fly high and fast and see everything from a God's-eye-view. Army soldiers have their own radios, move slowly, stay low and see everything from yards away.

It comes down to just one person to integrate those perspectives, and do it in an information-rich environment where the electronic "noise" from various radios and other systems can be virtually deafening, as Rosner discovered during the March mission. The JTAC's job is highly technical, unbelievably intense and at times intuitive to the point of being an art form. Rosner and his fellow JTACs are the military's "jet whisperers."

"They're the glue that holds this all together," US Air Force Brigadier General Steve Kwast, commander of air operations at Bagram, says of his air controllers. "What the JTAC does is have a conversation between the aircraft and the ground commander to makes sure our operations are sophisticated enough to solve problems without doing harm to the Afghan people."

That conversation Rosner is supposed to have depends on two things: an impressive suite of high technology, and Rosner's ability to quickly visualize and process data fed to him by this technology. Strapped to his chest, Rosner carries a handheld video player called a "Rover," built by L3 Communications, a New York-based defense contractor. The device, the size and shape of a PSP game console and costing tens of thousands of pounds, reads signals transmitted by the camera pods strapped to the underside of all NATO fighter aircraft. With his Rover, Rosner can see everything a pilot sees, from the pilot's perspective.

On his back he carries a radio programmed with secure frequencies that tie him directly to the pilots overhead and to his unit's headquarters, several miles away. At the headquarters, another JTAC monitors a bigger, more sophisticated video terminal that displays the same video Rosner sees, plus other data.

With his own eyes, Rosner sees the situation the soldiers are in. He sees the terrain and the apparent locations of enemy forces and civilians. Rosner must blend all of this, often in seconds' time, and answer several critical questions:

* Is what the ground commander is seeing actually an enemy force?* Does the pilot also see the same enemy force?* Are any civilians in harm's way?* If not, would an aircraft's intervention help resolve a dangerous situation?* Is so, does the aircraft need to use a weapon, or could its mere presence help deter the enemy?* If weapons are necessary, exactly what ordnance -- guns, missiles or bombs -- should the pilot use to attack the enemy? * Once weapons have been used, is the enemy neutralised, or is another attack necessary?

"You have to calculate so many different things with you and with the aircraft," says Airman 1st Class William Chandler, an apprentice JTAC studying under Rosner.

How does Rosner prepare for such a complex task? He does his homework, is how. The night before the Chowkay mission, he spends hours reviewing radio frequencies, map coordinates and aircraft flight schedules. And he lies in his bunk, eyes closed, sighing deeply, seeming to meditate on the mission to come. "As long as you have right tools, and coordinate with the pilots, you can have confidence," he says.

Quick ThinkingBack in the Chowkay, Rosner calls out to a nearby Army radio operator. He asks if he can borrow the soldier's portable satellite transmitter for a moment to route his request for CAS.

The plan works. Rosner's petition filters through to an Air Operations Center located at an undisclosed Middle Eastern country. Officers at the center approve the request. The F-15s are now available to Rosner, should they become necessary. They orbit somewhere up above and probably miles away, invisible to the naked eye.

By now the enemy fighters are in position, perfectly primed for an attack on Rosner and the soldiers. An intelligence report arrives indicating that the Taliban have asked their commander permission to open fire. Remarkably, the commander says no. When the fighters repeat the request, the commander again rejects it. As if to put an exclamation point on the Taliban's sudden, unexpected powerlessness, a pair of Army scout helicopters fires incendiary rockets into the mountaintops, cloaking them in white smoke.

At this moment, the Army agricultural team completes its meeting. Rosner and the soldiers pack up their equipment and sprint back to their armored vehicles, as the scout helicopters fire their machine guns to keep the enemy's heads down. "I can't believe we didn't get shot at," one soldier breathes.

For his part, Rosner is relieved. The F-15s with their 20-millimeter cannons and one-ton, satellite-guided bombs were at his disposal. With just a few expertly-worded commands, Rosner could have devastated the Chowkay. It would have made for a lopsided victory against the Taliban fighters, but a risky one. "Everything is so critical," Chandler says. Any mistake "can cost you a life."

For NATO's jet whisperers, that awful knowledge is a constant companion, as invisible and powerful as the aircraft they control, orbiting high overhead.

Above: Rosner on the mission in question

Edited by Nate Lanxon

Comments

This phrase 'more concentrated firepower than the rest of the battalion combined' deja-vue. Is it copied from some other article?

Reader

May 2nd 2010

Didn't the print edition of Wired run an article very similar to this?